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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25982140">The Umbrella Initiative</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viola_Blaire/pseuds/Viola_Blaire'>Viola_Blaire</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Strange (2016), The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU where the Umbrella Academy is set in the same universe as MCU, Allison has an ongoing twitter war with Tony, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Marvel Cinematic Universe Fusion, Ben is the only one with any positive EQ in this family, Five always has a brain cell, Five finds a job and needs child labor laws, Five has a coffee addiction, Five jumps to the future and is trapped there by the commission, Five's siblings try and get him back from the future, Gen, Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase Two Compliant, My First Work in This Fandom, Obeys MCU laws, TUA gets more modern technology, Timey-Wimey, Vanya is savage, also everyone is super badass but still can't get anything done, and a sweet tooth, as voted by the avengers three years in a row, at least the umbrella academy really have superpowers, but negative EQ, neither of them are winning, no pairings in part 1, the commission gets a rewrite here to be more evil and more badass, the infinity stones are sentient to an extent, the kids powers comes from the infinity stones, the umbrella academy are the worst superheroes, there are multiple apocalypses because TUA is a messed up family with messed up problems, this is probably going to be split into parts, this is what happens when MCU weirdness runs into TUA weirdness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:34:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25982140</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viola_Blaire/pseuds/Viola_Blaire</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five jumps into the future and gets stranded because the Commission just really needs an assassin with a brain cell, and the Handler is up to no good. Five manages to be best and worst employee every month he works there. And Vanya shows she's really a Slytherin underneath all that Hufflepuff sweetness. </p><p>OR:</p><p>The Umbrella Academy if they were living in the MCU, with MCU's modern technology and the kids' powers deriving from the infinity stones. Vanya gets access to a computer and does her own research, and sets off to learn the Mystic Arts to bring her brother back home. Meanwhile Five picks up a job and deals with too many apocalypses. Ben has aspirations beyond being the only person in his family with any EQ, and Klaus finds teenage rebellion as his new vice. </p><p>AKA</p><p>this is the fic where the Umbrella Academy exists within the MCU, Vanya gets access to the Ancient One and the Time Stone, and resolves to bring her brother home. A lot of settings are changed, i.e., the kids powers explicitly draws from the infinity stones, the Commission is an evil corporation and Five is starting a one man French revolution against his bosses. Everyone is both badass and useless, as per the laws of both MCU and TUA.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Allison Hargreeves &amp; Vanya Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves &amp; Vanya Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves &amp; Vanya Hargreeves, Grace Hargreeves &amp; Everyone, Grace Hargreeves &amp; Vanya Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves &amp; Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy &amp; Allison Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy &amp; Ben Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy &amp; Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy &amp; Luther Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy &amp; Vanya Hargreeves, Reginald Hargreeves &amp; The Hargreeves, The Hargreeves &amp; Dr. Pogo (Umbrella Academy)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>94</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>The umbrella academy</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Umbrella Initiative</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Vanya leaves home on a Tuesday, Pogo helps carry her suitcases to the car and drives her off during the other children’s history course with Mom in the morning. Mom waves out the library window but does not say a word, Luther pauses in his report on the impact of the Tulip Crash to glance at the retreating car, but does not way a word, the rest of the children to not see Vanya leave.</p><p>A week later, Klaus turns Vanya’s room into his closet. </p><p>Vanya leaves home on a Tuesday, not that the days of the week mattered to the academy. Their free days are when both Father and Pogo are otherwise preoccupied and they are allowed a free afternoon to study on their own. But Vanya marks the day in her calendar as just shy of Five’s six month disappearance. </p><p>Three weeks after Five had disappeared, Father had put up a portrait of Five in the hall, “to remind them of the consequences of their arrogance”, Father had announced when Mom hang it up. Klaus rolls his eyes with his whole body, and Vanya tries not to cry in front of Father, she resolves to sneak out to the public library on their next self-study period. She’s not wholly successful in her endeavor, but Mom does not tell Father of her sneaking around, and she does not ask questions when Vanya requests a map of the city later. </p><p>In those first three weeks after Five disappeared, Vanya went through every book he had taken out of the library and thrown into the chaos of his room. She started on the open books first, reading through them with her finger held in place of the page he had laid open to, so she wouldn’t lose the page and mess with his “organized trash system”. The first books she picked up because she missed him, and he had been rambling about his equations for months. The books contained less math and more theories, Vanya found them easier to understand than the quantum physics Five would work out while talking at her (she has no idea how anyone is supposed to remember what the variable was found to be ten minutes ago in another equation, but Five always remembered, and she just likes listening to his animated voice). After getting through the first book on theories with relative ease, Vanya picked up Five’s books and moved them to her room. Math was not where her strength lay, especially not Five-level math. But she was really good at doing research, a side effect of having access to a giant library about the world and no access to leaving the house to explore that world.</p><p>Vanya picks out a new notebook and fills it with notes referencing suspected time travel incidents and has a list of professors who’s written about time travel. The week after Five’s portrait goes up in the hall, Vanya gets a chance to sneak to the public library before dinner, she comes home with a dozen books hidden in her bag and an armful of research papers the librarian was kind enough to print for her. </p><p>The week after their siblings stop commenting on Five’s absence, Vanya has two books and a paper laid out on her desk. The first book comes from the Hargreeves’ library, it is written by a researcher who claims to have studied with monks who can reach across space, across great distances, with a simple wave of their hands. The research paper came from the same man, who details not only geometric diagrams used by the monks, but his understanding of how space is folded through to create a bridge the monks may simply step through and appear on the other side of the world.</p><p>The man has long been laughed out of the scientific community for his outlandish theories, Five had once told Vanya, but while he cannot work out how geometric diagrams can open a doorway across space, the man’s research is not entirely groundless. Five had taken her on jumps before, when he wants to sneak down to Griddy’s for coffee. Slipping through the fabrics of reality and squeezing himself out on the other side was as instinctive to Five as memorizing music came to her; but Five says every jump, no matter how small, or how intuitively he jumps, is always based on math. “the base code of the universe!” he had called it, “just because I understand the math needed to make every little jump without working through the equation with numbers in my head, doesn’t mean it’s not based on math, and geometry may simply be these monks’ way of visualizing the math necessary.”</p><p>Vanya laughed at his arrogance but remembered the man’s name. The second book on her desk was by a still respected physicist. He had written extensively on the connection between space-time, and theorized any jump between space is actually a trip through time, and any jump in time is a trip through space. Five had several of the man’s research taped up on his walls, clearly respected and reworked thoroughly in his fevered searched. While Vanya understood precisely none of the math taped up and revised all over the walls, she had much better luck reading through his published book (in which the man had quoted Einstein no less than 37 times and compared his own genius to his idol all 37 times, Vanya thought she can make a drinking game out of it). </p><p>Five had been gone for over two months already, if he had jumped through space instead of time, he would’ve slowly made his way home by now. Even if he had jumped himself to Antarctica, he could’ve made his way to a research center and waved that Hargreeves name around until he’s shipped home. No, Five’s time travel must’ve worked, he’s been displaced in time. Something must’ve also gone wrong with his equations, as he clearly could not return to his own time. Was he hurt? Overstretched himself? Would he show up on their doorstep at Christmas and only moments would’ve passed for him? Did he get his equation backwards and landed in the past instead of the future like he wanted? It must’ve been jarring for him if an equation did not work, math came so naturally to Five he would sometimes make up his own symbols to work through a problem than wait to learn what mathematicians used. Ben asked if he was re-inventing math each time he did that, Luther said no, and they quickly dissolved into a pointless squabble when Five pointed out “math is the base code of the universe” and “how could you idiots not see how simple this is”.</p><p>(Five never called Vanya an idiot when she has trouble with Math. He always sat down with a grumble and picks up their math book to teach it to her “the conventional way” Pogo wanted. Vanya prided herself on being second best at math thanks to his tutelage) </p><p>Carefully pulling out two pieces of letter paper, Vanya began to write out the letters she had been drafting in her head for the past few days. The papers she had requested from Mom, who keeps a stock of fancy letter papers and matching envelopes. Vanya had picked out a particularly fancy one with elegant French borders for the letter addressed to the well respected scientist. Space-time being related was clearly a well established theory, and Five has demonstrated himself the theory is true. But Vanya doesn’t need theories, she needs him to advise her on who has experimented beyond number simulations, who has pushed math beyond theory and into the practice of what traveling through time would entail. She knows she would not learn in a lifetime the math necessary to calculate what Five’s been doing in the past few months, but she carefully alluded to his equations and inquired as a fellow like-minded scientist who’s interested in exploring more of his research. After a blowing on the drying ink, Vanya signed the letter as Five instead of herself. Sealing the envelope, Vanya began her second letter. This one written on an almost childishly colorful paper, requesting an audience with the monks the man had met, “to explore alternative means of teleportation”. She kept the tone of the letter light, as a child who’s never met anyone else with his abilities and excited to share his gifts. Once again, she signed the letter as Five instead of her own name. </p><p>There was a post at the end of their block, Vanya manages to mail her letters before dinner, and goes to Mom to ask for any letters that my have come for Five. The Umbrella Academy received a lot of fan mail, Mom sorted through them once a month, taking out any that were dangerous or gross (Ben got a lot of the former, while Allison received most of the latter). Five received the most letters after One and Three, he would read out the sillier ones to Vanya, little kids imagining themselves with his power, and boring adults who wanted him to use his powers to bring world peace. Vanya particularly enjoyed the man who wanted Five to assassinate the entirety of the Russian mafia to help him out of a debt he owes. Five enjoyed the kid who offered him “the best pastry in Paris” if he could pop over on his birthday. </p><p>Mom did have a stack of Five’s letters from the past two months. Vanya pretended to sift through them, her fingers sliding over Five’s name written on the letters repeatedly. It wasn’t until her tears wetted the envelopes did she realize she wasn’t just pretending for Mom’s sake. She was no better than these fans who wouldn’t receive a reply, she too could only wait for Five to return to her. With shaky hands, Vanya gestured upstairs, too upset to allow herself to speak. Mom gave a hug Vanya could only half return with the box of envelopes, but she dutifully brought the box upstairs and left it on Five’s desk.</p><p>Every month afterwards, Mom would bring Five’s letters upstairs into the box sitting on his desk, as if Five would pop in after his training and tear into them. Instead, it’s been Vanya sneaking into Five’s room and going through the letters for the two scientists she wrote to. The first letter came back with disappointing results, while the theory of time and space being the fabric of one thing was well and good, the man was nowhere close to even making spacial jumps, let alone time jumps. Vanya bitterly thought the man should give up his Ph.D. to Five, since Five could make those calculations half asleep and take her down to Griddy’s. </p><p>The second letter would not be returned for a full month, the man explained he was very pleased to receive the letter, as it had been bounced between a few temp addresses before his friend was able to get it to him. But he brought much more promising news. He confirms the monk’s method of travel appear different than what he’s seen Five do on TV, he’s sure Five could benefit from a discussion with them. He also confirms he did bring up the space-time theory to the monks, who agreed on the theory, though they have never manipulated time as it is seen as a violation of the natural order. The bad news, as he concluded his letter, was the monks have been wary of him ever since he published his book, preferring their solitude to the spotlight he had temporarily shined on them. He does leave Vanya with a location in New York who practice a similar teaching as the monks and encourages “him” to reach out. </p><p>Vanya grabs a map and investigates this institute. </p><p>Vanya spends most of her lessons with Mom, who not only coaches her violin lessons, but her separate classes when the rest of the group is learning their powers, public speaking, etiquettes, and PR management. As a result, Vanya spends most of her day in additional music, foreign language, and sciences classes with Mom, who would teach her while preparing lunch, or watch her practice in the gallery as she is charged. Mom is also the first one Vanya brings up the idea of music school to, when she expresses the desire to learn more than just the violin. Vanya carefully phrases her request, as all Father needs to do is download additional program into Mom for her to teach Vanya another instrument. But Mom can only teach what Father has programed her to teach, she cannot form a band with Vanya, and she cannot help her write music one day. Vanya considered this request to be a calculated risk, there was every chance her Father would dismiss her request like all her other wishes. But Father’s attitude towards her has taken a subtle turn since Five’s disappearance. Before, Father liked having her watch while she is excluded, drag her out on missions he is observing but deny her the opportunity to join. Now, Father wanted as little to do with her as possible, she is no longer taken on trainings or missions, and dismissed at meals while he lectured the rest of her siblings. Vanya tries not to think about the implications of this change, of her value only as a chain to her best friend. </p><p>Mom expresses concerns over her safety several times before Vanya convinces her of the particular institute she is interested in, considered best on the east coast, it is a prestigious boarding school she would be confined to. She asks for Mom’s help with the audition, and shows her a newspaper the school had been featured in. Mom takes the paper to Pogo that night, and Vanya walks into her lesson the next morning with her audition piece already picked out for her, and a directive from Father not to embarrass him by failing. </p><p>It went better than Vanya could’ve ever hoped for. She practices Scheherazade’s solo non-stop for three weeks straight. It may be a beautiful piece, and doubtlessly would impress her teachers, but Diego began begging her by week two to play anything else. She doesn’t listen to him; it doesn’t take her 1001 nights to know the piece like it’s etched into her soul, and Pogo sets her practice exams to close any gaps between the academy’s lessons and her chosen school. </p><p>Klaus knocks on her door one day to request she plays something happier, as “even the ghosts are getting bored of that song, Vanny”, but she ignores him and keeps on practicing. She’s never been to an audition, has never compared herself to her peers, but she pours everything she has into practice. This is her chance, being outside would give her access, she could go meet the monks, she could research on her own without prying eyes, and she will find Five again, whenever he may be.</p><p>Mom accompanies her on her first actual visit to the school, at the end of June, just over four months after Five disappears. Vanya sits with the other students and take a placement exam, the questions were very easy, as Pogo had predicted. And the two of them are taken on a tour of the school, with its gothic windows and hardwood practice rooms. A teacher came by and introduced himself, judging by the awed look around her, Vanya could only guess the man’s famous, but she had not recognized his face or his name. The teacher showed them the auditorium and its many acoustic features the school boasts. Mom puts her hand on Vanya’s shoulder and promises to come to her recitals. Vanya knows she’ll be the only one who wants to come, but doubtful Father would let her leave.<br/>
They return the next afternoon for the first round audition. Vanya is sweating through her dress shirt by the time she’s sitting in the auditorium. They had not told the other kids where Vanya was going, who had gone on a mission with Father very early in the morning. Vanya woke up to the ruckus as the rest of her siblings got dressed at the crack of dawn and rushed out of the house. Unable to sleep, Vanya made her way down to the gallery to sit with Mom. It was still too early for Breakfast, and Mom usually waited until everyone returned before serving anyways. She sat on her chair charging, drained after a night spent cleaning the house and fixing various tasks Father had set her. So Vanya tried to work through her nerves by playing for her one more time. Mom asked her to introduce herself as if she was a judge sitting down in the auditorium, a stranger who’ll be grading her on her technique. Unfortunately, that was when they realized Vanya lacks both the public speaking training the others received, and the inherent confidence her sister her sister boasted. </p><p>The rest of the morning was spent with Vanya bowing and curtsying while balancing her violin in one hand delicately. Mom asked Vanya to make her introduction before playing every song, and the few sentences stating her name and the piece she’ll be performing seems to affect her playing. Diego’s stutter has transmitted to her as she hesitated through her two lines, and her handshakes through the first notes. It’s made worse in late morning when Pogo returns and hands an ID to her, and the name states “Vanya Grace” instead of Hargreeves. He softly explains to Vanya the name change is merely for security reasons, so no one would hurt her to get to the Umbrella Academy. But Vanya knows it’s because Father does not want her associated with his name, she cannot even bring herself to feel better with Pogo’s white lie. She sits in Mom’s armchair, shaking as she repeats her new name to herself repeatedly, willing herself not to cry. It was nearly lunch time when Mom finishes sews up Klaus’ cut and wraps an ice pack around Diego’s shoulder. So the other kids were sent to clean up Mom summons Vanya to help her prepare lunch. </p><p>Numbly repeating her new name under her breath, Vanya followed Mom’s motions and set the table, waited patiently for Father to allow them to sit, and chewed automatically the few bites of salad she managed to shove into her mouth. She looked up at Father when they all stood after lunch, but he was focused only on criticizing Diego’s mistake that morning and does not pay her any attention as they are set off to afternoon lessons. Vanya’s not sure why she still looks to him when he can’t be bothered to dismiss her in person anymore.</p><p>She stutters on her introduction, wavering on her own name like an idiot; her first notes screech unseemly and her hands tremble. But she allows the music to take her over, relying on her muscle memory to guide her as she loses herself to the song. A girl stuck married to a murderous tyrant, a girl who relies on her stories the way Vanya is relying on her music to win her freedom, a girl who achieves when all hope seems lost. Vanya allows herself to be that accomplished princess who saved herself and her loved ones for just a moment, she allows herself to remember a time when Five showed her a book of architecture around the world, pointed to the domes of Persian palaces, and promised to teleport both of them to stand on the very tip of those domes one day. She has not allowed herself to remember these moments with Five for months, engrossed in her search, but she lets herself indulge in this one memory. Five standing by the library staircase, swinging himself on the railing like he was holding onto the tip of the dome, and inviting her to join him on top of the world. She smiles into the memory, eyes closed to all but Five’s laughing face and his outstretched hand. </p><p>Her music comes to a stop before Vanya could bring herself to let go of Five and face her audience. She takes a shaky breath, willing her eyes open to face the judges. The teacher who had introduced himself yesterday gave a firm nod, while an older gentleman and lady next to him appreciatively applauded. Forcing oxygen into her lungs again, Vanya bowed with much more confidence. </p><p>It wasn’t until she was home that night did she realize she had skipped out on her meds that day.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Her first few weeks in a school was overwhelming, Vanya had trouble remembering where her classes were, who her many teachers were, and she felt lonely despite being surrounded by more people than she had ever known.</p><p>Pogo had been correct his lessons were more advanced than most 7th graders learned, it’s what happens when you don’t have summer or weekends, he had personally come down to the school and arranged her course load. “Even an ordinary child like you can catch up to the others when your siblings have more important lessons to train for,” Father had told her. Vanya wasn’t deterred, this was her chance to see how she fared amongst her peers. If no summers or weekends all these years had helped her advance past the kids her age, she’ll have to work twice as hard now to advance even faster without Pogo or Mom’s tutoring. She may be ordinary amongst the Umbrella Academy, but she can excel here, she can learn without Father’s prying eyes. She’s had a taste of her music without her pills, she had been so stressed her hands shook and she sweated through her shirt, but her wild emotions also allowed her to connect to her music in a way she has never felt before. While she has no plans to go off her pills cold turkey like that again, Vanya does want to experience the same thrill she had, playing with all her emotions on display. </p><p>Pogo arranged things so she had honored calc &amp; trig with the 12th graders, though the teacher is dull, and Vanya feels like she’s unlearning Five’s tutoring, so she turns the teacher out and tries to practice her classwork with Five’s voice in her ear, meticulously dissecting the problem apart like a cat pulling at a thread. She is determined to be at the top of her math class, she won’t fall behind her siblings here. Five would be most disappointed she wasted all his tutoring when he came back. </p><p>She also has honored French and Physics with the 12th graders, she’s having trouble finding a lab partner in both classes as everyone else are paired off with their friends, but that’s just another class at home without Five, so Vanya takes her own notes and climb onto the stool whenever their lab sets are too big for her. Physics is a walk in the park so far, she must’ve absorbed more of Five’s ramblings than she thought, as the class so far is mind numbingly boring with its waves and energy. The teacher hasn’t even attempted to discuss the practical applications of general relativity and spacial jumps when he taught about light’s wave like properties. Five could do this before he was taller than the dining room table, Vanya thought snobbishly, and snuck out more scientific journals she thought relevant to Five’s time traveling research to read during class. She’s not sure why Pogo wanted her to be in a French class, they had been trained from birth to speak in multiple languages, French was as good as a mother tongue to her. But she dutifully wrote out her translations and asked her classmates for directions to a nearby hospital, and silently wondered at a world where your robot mother doesn’t have all the latest medical expertise downloaded. </p><p>The rest of her lessons she sat with the 11th graders, Vanya felt like pulling her hair out as the class discusses Lord of the Flies for the third week in a row and she resolves to write to Ben and just adds whatever his thoughts are on the book to her paper. The very thought of dealing with these unlikable people and their problems is sending her into an uncontrollable rage. Vanya had voiced to her teachers all the strategical survival tactics the characters had missed, simple things even she knew, and her teacher had quietly shushed her with “that’s not the point of the story, Miss Grace. Pay attention to their motivations.” </p><p>Her anger at her English class is not helped by her music classes. Vanya had received praise from the judges after her audition, but she’s having trouble playing to their (and her) expectations now that she was taking her pills with breakfast every day again. She knows her mood swings can get wild and her whole body felt sick with anxiety when she’s not on them; everything was too loud, and her own mind felt like a distraction. But her mood swings also allowed her to feel her music in a way she cannot through the fog of her medication. Vanya felt trapped in her own mind, she was not herself when she skipped her meds, but her playing improved drastically when she allows herself to experience the full range of her emotions while playing. Her teacher, Mr. Lightwood, the older gentleman who had been the kindly judge at her audition, had shown her a tape of her performance. Vanya could hardly believe that had been her on stage, even with her eyes closed, she looks animated, her music has a life behind it she has never considered before. </p><p>But she also knew Father would be extremely angry if she stopped her pills and let her mood swings embarrass him in public. After weeks of deliberation, Vanya decided to only take one pill each day, and at night, after her evening practice. This way, her mind was at its clearest when she’s alone in her room with her music. And if she broke down crying each night, overwhelmed with grief and anger and a million other emotions she cannot name; if she stood beneath the showers, trembling as she allowed water ice cold to drown the white hotness she feels deep in her chest; if she swallowed one pill and flushed the other, allowing the fog to once again swallow her and grant her some small peace while she drifts off into a fretful sleep, well, that’s her business. </p><p>
  <em> Dearest Five,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So much has happened in the past few months since you’ve been gone. Diego has managed to break three ribs; I believe that ups his count to 17 in total. Allison had rumored herself onto the soccer team at that school on Beaker street, Father put a stop to that after just one practice. Father has also put up a portrait of you in the entrance hall, it does not look like you, your eyes are not that cold, and you’d never sit still that long for some portrait.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve been writing to a few scientists you’ve been reading up on; one of them has pointed me towards an institute here in the city that might help me find you. So, I’ve moved out of the house, I found a music school just blocks from the Sanctum, Father has graciously allowed me to move here. He has also changed my name to Vanya Grace, legally, to allow me to study here. If you were here, I’m sure you would’ve thrown a riot, but I couldn’t even bring tears into my eyes. I still cannot name all the emotions I’m feeling towards my new name but being named after Mom has given me a level of freedom I had not expected. I have my own library card now; I took a break during lunch hour last week and opened my own savings account. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Life here is no different than at the academy, I’ve not been able to make any friends, but at least students here smile at me when we pass in the hall. Turns out thanks to never having weekends and vacations, we’ve made more progress in our schoolwork, I’m sitting in class with 16 and 17 year old, what I’m studying now you probably learned when we were six. We’re still learning about waves, Five, WAVES. My teacher was displeased I spent Monday’s class reading a different book, but she was teaching so slowly I think my brain might melt out of my head from disuse soon. How can I sit in her class quietly wasting away time when you are, well, whenever you are?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I miss you so very dearly, Five, sometimes I am besides myself with worry. Sometimes I feel my hope shaken, if you could go anywhere in time, why haven’t you returned yet? What if you had landed in an alternate timeline and I am doomed to never seeing you again? What if you are hurt? I long for the day when you are back in my arms. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Be safe</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Vanya </em>
</p><p>Five slowly folded up the letter, this was the earliest date, a week before their 14th birthday. His sweet, shy Vanya was looking for him! She’s going to a new school, Five can barely imagine Vanya anywhere but in the mansion, but she had moved out to search for him. He tries not to wallow in the guilt of what his sister is now facing, in search for him. Can she find him in this after life? He is still holding out hope he’ll find Vanya or Ben, the two names he had called out first but could not find beneath the rubbles. Five looks around the library, if he was going to make it back to his family, he’s got some readings to do.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm currently one chapter and some odd scenes ahead, so my goal is to post every week, </p><p>some notes on this chapter: Vanya and Five were clearly close as kids, as indicated by Reginalds' notes, and in the comics, Reginald did threaten to send her away to music school. So here Vanya essentially got away from Reginald's control when she was much younger because her focus shifted from being included in the UA to get away from the UA to search for Five, and when she has access to computers and research a lot more advanced than the technology in the show's setting, she has an actual chance. </p><p>on school: Vanya is a world class muscian yet Reginald insisted she was ordinary, so I wanted to explore how skewed the kids view themselves when Reginald's control extends beyond just Vanya. Five can do math at a level that is incomprehensible, leagues above the show's technology, yet no one bats an eye. There's no cell phones but a functioning AI in Grace. So really, it's Reginald teaching the kids extremely advanced studies from his alien world but isolate them so much they never see how extraordinary they are beyond just their powers. </p><p>We'll explore what Five's been up to next chapter :)</p><p>Drop me a comment, thank you for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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